The First Week of Kindergarten
Dear Parents,
We had a wonderful first week in Kindergarten!
It was a great pleasure to meet this fun group of curious, excited, eager and thoughtful students. While there is a lot to learn about their new school, classroom routines and procedures, the kindergarteners are very open and ready to try all the new things. Every morning, we start with Morning Meeting and Tefillah, discuss classroom rules and learn about our two groups, the Yellow and Green Butterflies. We have been exploring all of the areas of the classroom and the school. The children had two specials this week – Music and P.E, and next week, students will meet their Art teacher.
In Language Arts, we have been reading books about the first days of kindergarten and our feelings about it. We began the week reading a book and discussing our summer vacations. Our kindergartners were excited to draw and write about what they did over the summer. During the week, we observed and informally assessed our student’s letter-sound recognition and pre-reading skills. This information will allow us to begin working with each child at his/her individual level.
In Math, we discussed how important Math is in our lives, created a web of all the parts of Math (numbers, shapes, patterns, time, measuring, money, etc.), explored our Math in Focus books and experimented with Math manipulatives in our classroom. We sorted and counted various objects and then practiced writing numbers 1 and 2 in our new Math Workbooks!
Our Morning Meeting includes an intricate Math routine with counting days of the current month (in different languages), using patterns, tallying by ones, tens and eventually hundreds, exploring coins, counting by 2, 5, 10, discussing weather, temperature graphs and much more.
In Science, we brainstormed some topics real scientists study and what we will be learning about in science this year. Students are excited to learn about plants, animals, nutrition, magnets, recycling, planets, forces and motion, and many other topics! Each student drew a picture of themselves wearing a lab coat and drew and wrote down 3 science topics they are looking forward to learning about this year.
Hebrew/Judaic Studies:
This week the children got to know each others’ names through games and role playing in which they introduced themselves using the words “Shalom, ani _____ שלום אני.” They also greeted each other with the word “Shalom.” We started learning about Rosh Hashana and practiced related vocabulary such as:(shofar, tapuach- apple, dvash- honey, rosh hashanah, yeled- a boy, Yalda – a girl). The children played a matching game and drew pictures of themselves on the first day of school. We use many ways to engage kids in the learning process, we sang and danced the song “Nesader maagal gadol,” and “bayaar bayaar.” We read the book “ Yeled Katan Halach Lagan” and “The Thankful book” by Todd Parr. Next week, we will continue our journey learning about the holidays and exploring the Hebrew language and culture.
Important Reminders:
- Please remember to pack the following items every day:
- labeled water bottle
- labeled snack in a separate bag (ziplock bags work great!)
- lunch (if your child brings lunch from home)
- Morning drop off is in the gym from 7:45 to 8:15 A.M. and in our general studies classroom from 8:15 to 8:30 A.M.
- Back to School Night – September 18:
Meet your child’s teachers, discuss curriculum and social and academic development and much more!
- 5:30-7:15pm: Lower School
- 6:45-8:30pm: Middle School
Have a great weekend!
Shabbat Shalom,
Irit, Rachel, Ilana, and Regina
Practicing our reading and writing skills!
Playing with friends
Brainstorming “Math”
Using geometric shapes to make our own train cars
Singing along in Music
Practicing counting and writing numbers 1 and 2
We have a lot of chess and checkers players